American history scholarship: the European connection

Many scholars working on the history of the US while being based in the UK see their workig life as a series of transatlantic relationships. They go to the US for research or conferencing, perhaps to work sometime during their career. Perhaps they even research a topic examining the UK-US ‘special relationship’.

However, it is important to recognise that our fellow historians in continental Europe also have an interest in the US and working with them provides a fruitful and unique perspective on the topics we study.

One important example of this relationship is the EEASA (European Early American Studies Association), an AHRC funded network project designed to link scholars of early America in a pan-European context. For more information, click here. They are holding their third biennial conference in Bayreuth, Germany next year. on Empire and Imagination in Early America and the Atlantic World.

Bayreuth University was also the venue in 2010 of the first Summer Academy of Atlantic History, designed to bring together junior scholars in the field from across Europe. For more on this click here. The second such event was held in Galway, Ireland this summer.

All of this activity shows that early American history is as lively a subject in Europe as it is in the US and UK and scholars should look on this as fact as an opportunity to expand their horizons!

Dr Catherine Armstrong is a Senior Lecturer in History at Manchester Metropolitan University, specialising in North American History.
She is a former teaching fellow in History at the University of Warwick and Oxford Brookes University.
Catherine was also Director of Historical Studies in the Open Studies department at the University of Warwick.
Her first book ‘Writing North America in the Seventeenth Century’ was published by Ashgate in June 2007.
As a long-time jobseeker for an academic role herself, Catherine is in a unique position to understand and offer her knowledge and experience to those developing an academic career.